“I’m having trouble seeing,” he answered back. “This head torch is aimed wrong or something.” He reached up and made a show of fumbling with the head torch, covering it with his hand. The view in Dive Control would be blackness now. He twisted the torch hard until it faced straight up at a crazy angle and quickly kicked up a cloud of silt from the sea bottom.

“Stop fooling around, Tusk,” Rausing’s voice was raised. “Hook the bomb and get back to the bell or it’ll be more than your girlfriend’s ears that are popping.”

Tusker scuffled his feet under the edge of the hull. Yes, there it was. The unmistakable turtle shell bulk of the mine. He squatted down, huffing into the microphone to exaggerate the sound of his effort. With one swift movement, he scooped up the mine, its carabiners still attached, and clipped it to his harness. It would be awkward going now, but he’d have to keep it out of sight of the camera. He twisted the torch back down and aimed it ahead, hoping the commotion and silt had kept Rausing from seeing.

Draped through the cut in the hull, now limp, was the umbilical torn from the diver trapped inside the wreck. Bubbles blossomed from the hole, catching the light from Tusker’s torch before disappearing into the blackness above. He grimaced at the prospect of having to detach the awkward bomb from Murray’s corpse.

“I’m going to take the hoist into the wreck and hook the bomb,” Tusker said in a mechanical voice he hoped would sound confident. There was silence for a moment. Then Rausing replied.

“Use the lift bags to get it out. We can’t risk the hoist fouling on the wreck.”

“I can guide it out,” Tusker replied authoritatively. “Your man is part of the cargo now, and it will be too difficult for me to extricate the bomb from him and the debris.” Silence again. No doubt Rausing was conferring with his crane operator.

“Fine, but make it fast.”

Tusker lifted the hook off the seafloor. It was half his own height and incredibly heavy. He dragged it over to the wreck and managed to wrestle it up and into the opening. It dropped inside. He followed it in.

“OK, feed out some cable,” he commanded. “I’m going to swim down to the bottom.”

The cable slackened and Tusker guided the unwieldy hook down the length of the upturned cargo hold. The light of his torch illuminated the grisly scene at the bottom. Murray’s torso was buried in debris, three of his limbs visible, a leg at an odd angle. And there, above the collar of his dive suit, was what was left of his head. It had been nearly torn clean off by the force of the taut umbilical on his helmet. Tusker averted his eyes, focusing on the task at hand.